So, coming home from university is stressful. Updates will be more regular now. There are fifteen chapters planned for this story, a one shot to go in the middle, followed by several much longer sequels. The ride is just beginning, kids. Oh, and the tense change in this chapter was deliberate. I think it makes Bruce's torment feel more... immediate.

Also, forgot the disclaimer, (will go back and fix at some point), Batman, the Joker, the Scarecrow, Alfred, Arkham Asylum, etc., all belong to DC Comics, I am only playing with them and make no profit. Only the plot is mine, please don't steal it, it's all I've got.

As always, thanks for the reviews!

Chapter Seven: Not Even In Their Army Anymore

"They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their fuckin' army anymore."

Captain Benjamin L. Willard, Apocalypse Now

It's raining outside. That's why the Dark Knight won't ride tonight.

Bruce knows this is a terrible excuse. Unless the rain is torrential, there is still crime on the streets of Gotham. If anything, the rain probably makes it easier. The night is somehow blacker when it rains, and the sound of heavy rainfall muffles screams more effectively than one might think.

Bruce tells himself it is too dangerous, the same way he has every night this month. All of the GCPD are after him, although Gordon helps him escape as often as he can.

He is lying to himself. The days of him being nothing but a lucky amateur are over. He can disable an unarmed opponent in less than two seconds, and an armed one in less than four. He's good. Maybe the best. Could give the guy in red and blue over in Metropolis a run for his money.

But he still doesn't go out.

All the televisions that are usually on in the background are switched off. Bruce finds the constant reminders of how he had failed Gotham, and himself, too crushing.

A lone concession, a police radio, on the table beside the armchair in which he sits, swilling whisky. "Bruce Wayne, millionaire playboy" may be drunk as a skunk as often as the opportunity presents itself, but "Bruce Wayne, secret vigilante" is as teetotal as a Mormon. He tries not to think about what this means, if it's cause of the ever increasing frown line in Alfred's brow.

Bruce knows what this is about really. He does, although he does his best to deny it.

Rachel.

He misses her so much it hurts, burns somewhere deep in his gut, leaves an aching hole in his chest where his heart should be, and although sometimes the pain recedes it can never, ever be truly ignored or forgotten.

It's strange. He was away from Gotham so long he was declared legally dead, but he always knew that she was there, waiting for him, if only as a friend. He never even considered the
possibility that she might be murdered in his absence, in the line of work she was in. Never considered that she might need him. Now she is dead, and her death is a millstone around his neck.

Well... one of them.

Bruce wasn't exactly thrilled about what happened to Harvey, either. It must have been no secret to anyone who had ever observed them together that he practically idolised the man. Batman was as much responsible for his downfall as the Joker, Bruce ardently believed. And he didn't know how to live with that responsibility. Sometimes he even wonders if he can.

But that... was simply out of the question. It would kill Alfred, for one thing. And if he tried and failed, Alfred would kill him.

So Bruce waits. He doesn't know what he is waiting for, but damn, does he hope he knows when he's found it.

And sometimes in the back of his skull, Batman whispers.

Blood will run in the streets without you. You must endure. You cannot fail them now. Gotham needs you.Needs me. Needs us.

Bruce ignores the voice, for now. But it is slowly getting stronger. Perhaps it will break him out of his inertia and ennui, if it shouts loudly enough. Bruce doesn't know, or care. It feels a great deal of the time as if he is screaming and screaming within the confines of his own head and no one can hear him. What's another voice among the screams?

Bruce falls asleep in the armchair as the first tendrils of dawn reach into the sky. Alfred finds him around seven, and sighs inwardly. He is really very worried about his young master, but it's not as if he can force him to go to a psychiatrist. Master Bruce can't walk into a therapist's office and say "I have issues stemming from the brutal murder of my parents in front of me, and it has compelled me to dress as a giant bat and run around the city fighting crime.". They'd have him declared legally insane and committed at the drop of a hat. No, that would not do.

Alfred should call Lucius again. Perhaps he'll have some ideas.

Alfred took the whisky bottle with him surreptitiously as he left, resolving to hide it somewhere better this time. Sometimes having the world's greatest detective as an employer was a trial rather than a pleasure.

For the first time in a long time, Bruce dreams of nothing but bats, bats which eventually fade into blackness.

There is a whisper in the blackness.

The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming.

Bruce murmurs in his sleep, as Gotham wakes around him, to news that Batman has still not been sighted, and the city worries. Bruce does not worry. Not yet. But he will, and soon.

The night isn't over yet.


Apocalypse Now is a wonderful movie, even if the ending is somewhat... problematic. Martin Sheen's portrayal of Willard is one of my favourites in the history of cinema, and given that I'm a bit of a film geek, that's really saying something. In some ways, I see parallels with Batman – like Willard, people need him, but they don't want to give him legal sanctions for his actions, even though they are dangerous and have profound psychological consequences.

"Lucky amateur" is how Bruce describes himself in Frank Miller's "Batman: Year One".

The "night is darkest..." is, of course, spoken by Harvey Dent in "The Dark Knight".

Thank you for reading!